Paul Revere House Audio Guide

Paul Revere House: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to Paul Revere House

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to the Paul Revere House highlights Welcome to Paul Revere House and points out what to notice during your visit.

   Welcome to North Square, in the heart of Boston's North End, where a small wooden house at nineteen North Square has outlasted more than three centuries of city life. This is the Paul Revere House, and it is a rare thing: the only official Freedom Trail site that is an actual home. Built around 1680, it is the oldest remaining structure in downtown Boston. Paul Revere owned it from 1770 to 1800, and on the night of April eighteenth, 1775, the silversmith left this house and set out on the journey that made him a legend. Today the building is a National Historic Landmark and a Freedom Trail site. It is also a legislated partner site of Boston National Historical Park. Over this guide we will look at how the house is put together, how it nearly disappeared, and what happened here after the Reveres moved on. As you look at the house, keep in mind how modest it is. This is the home of a craftsman and businessman, not a grand mansion, and that is a big part of its charm.

2. 02

   A House Older Than the Revolution

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to the Paul Revere House highlights A House Older Than the Revolution and points out what to notice during your visit.

   Start with the age of the place. The house dates to about 1680, which makes it downtown Boston's oldest residence. The North End around it is Boston's oldest residential neighborhood, so the house sits in the middle of the city's earliest everyday life. The building has changed over time. In the mid-eighteenth century it was renovated to follow the Georgian style that had become fashionable. Unlike some Boston homes of the era, which had a separate kitchen building, this one has a two-story extension at the back where the kitchen was located. Inside, each floor has two rooms. Look for the plasterwork, the woodwork and the fireplaces. The ground floor holds a typical late-eighteenth-century kitchen with cooking implements, and a large Hall restored and furnished to look as it might have when the first owner lived here. Upstairs, the chambers hold period furnishings, including several pieces that belonged to the Revere family. These rooms invite you to picture a household going about its day, with the city's most famous ride still ahead.

3. 03

   Revere at Home, and the Ride That Began Here

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to the Paul Revere House highlights Revere at Home, and the Ride That Began Here and points out what to notice during your visit.

   Paul Revere and his family owned and occupied this house most of the time from 1770 to 1800. The house may not have been their home for most of the 1780s, but the ownership ran the full 30 years. It was from here, on the night of April eighteenth, 1775, that the silversmith left his small wooden home and set out on the journey that ultimately made him a legend. Revere was also a craftsman, a businessman and an entrepreneur, and that wider story is part of what the site now tells. In the education and visitor center, you can see displays of silver and artifacts connected with his many business ventures. You can also learn the story of the midnight ride as Revere himself told it, in his own words. It is a good chance to set the famous gallop beside the daily life of a working man with a household to support.

4. 04

   Boarding House, Tenement and a Narrow Escape

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to the Paul Revere House highlights Boarding House, Tenement and a Narrow Escape and points out what to notice during your visit.

   After Revere sold the house in 1800, it soon became a sailor's boarding house. By the second half of the nineteenth century it was an immigrant tenement, and the ground floor had been remodeled for shops. At various times the building held a candy store, a cigar factory, an Italian bank, and a vegetable and fruit business. A place we now treat as a shrine spent much of its life as an ordinary, crowded, working building. Then came the rescue. In 1902, Paul Revere's great-grandson, John P. Reynolds Junior, bought the building to make sure it would not be demolished. Pauline Revere Thayer, a great-granddaughter of Revere and a cousin of Reynolds, was also a key figure in the early years of the Paul Revere Memorial Association and in the restoration of the house. In April 1908, the house opened to the public as one of the earliest historic house museums in the nation. More recently, archeologists have worked at the house too. Excavations carried out between 2011 and 2013 added to what we know about the site.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   This section of the Mappu audio guide to the Paul Revere House highlights Before You Head Off and points out what to notice during your visit.

   Before you move on, take a look at North Square around the house and notice how a small wooden building holds its place among the streets of the North End. Check the event schedule if you can, because living history programs are held in the courtyard and period gardens. The neighborhood rewards exploring. The Old North Church, another Freedom Trail landmark, is nearby, and the North End's famous bakeries and historic architecture are just steps from the house. You can follow the Revere story outward from here, or simply wander and see what else this old part of Boston has kept. There is plenty left to notice: the way the house sits among its neighbors, the details of its upper rooms, and the many lives that passed through the same doorway.